Number of Foreign Consulates in Greenland Doubles Today

Two new flags are going up in Nuuk as Canada and France open new diplomatic posts in Greenland, doubling the number of consulates in the territory's capital. Canada's Governor General Mary Simon and Foreign Minister Anita Anand are leading a delegation to the capital Friday to formally launch Ottawa's first consulate on the island, accompanied by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, the BBC reports. French officials are set to inaugurate their own mission the same day. Until now, only the US and Iceland had consulates in Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark.

Canada pledged to open a consulate in Greenland in 2024, before President Trump returned to office and threatened to annex the island, the AP reports. France said it decided to open a consulate after President Emmanuel Macron visited Greenland in June. Simon framed the visit as backing Greenlanders' right to chart their own course, saying Canada "stands firmly in support of the people of Greenland who will determine their own future."

The trip highlights close cultural ties between Inuit in Canada and Greenland, with more than 60 Canadian Inuit flying in for the ceremony after years of lobbying for closer links. Simon, Canada's first Indigenous governor general, is also Inuk. "Her visit is an affirmation at the highest level of the cultural and ethnic connections between Arctic Canada and Greenland," said Michael Myers, an Arctic scholar at the University of British Columbia. "We want to come together in solidarity with Greenland to show our support and to say: That land is not for sale," Susie-Ann Kudluk, a delegate from an Inuit youth council in northern Quebec, told the CBC.

The new consulates also serve as a quiet counterweight to Trump's repeated suggestions that the US should control Greenland for strategic reasons, and his criticism of Canada's Arctic defenses, the BBC reports. Greenlanders, and NATO allies including Canada and France, have rejected any talk of a US takeover. Ottawa, meanwhile, is trying to close its own gaps in the North: Prime Minister Mark Carney's government has pledged a permanent military presence in the Arctic and more than $1 billion for northern infrastructure, while Anand has called Arctic defense "an unquestionable national security priority."